New Cemeteries in the Northen Capitals:An Introduction

This introduction to cemeteries in the three northern capitals discusses approaches to the history of burials and cemeteries in in the Northern part of the Netherlands. The departmental capitals Assen, Groningen and Leeuwarden – as so many other cities in the Netherlands - obtained new public cemeteries in the same decades of the first half of the 19th centuries. The similarities and differences between the burial grounds in these cities are discussed, simultaneously introducing the most prominent research topics in the literature on development of funerary culture in the Netherlands